Harel Weinstein

Professor of Physiology and Biophysics; Chairman, Department of Physiology and Biophysics; Director, Institute for Computational Biomedicine Tri-institutional Progessor (Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Sloan-Kettering, Rockefeller University), Weill Medical College of Cornell University

The Weinstein lab is devoted to studies in molecular and computational biophysics that address complex systems in physiology, and to the development and application of bioinformatics and engineering approaches to systems biology. Mathematical modeling and statistical mechanics-based simulations (MD, MC, ED) are used to study the behavior of macromolecular systems and assemblies. The biomedical endpoints are neurotransmission in health and disease, drug abuse mechanisms, and cancer – with special emphasis on G protein coupled receptors and neurotransmitter transporters (NSS) about which the lab has made pioneering discoveries regarding the detailed molecular mechanisms of activation and trafficking in signal transduction cascades; this also led to selective ligand design and novel therapeutic modalities for diseases associated with the malfunction of the specific molecular systems.